HELICOPTER AMBULANCES USED HEAVILY

One of every three persons who uses LifeBeat, Southeast Missouri Hospital's air medical service, is a heart patient.

"Over the past year, 30 percent of LifeBeat missions have been cardiac cases," said Dr. Nancy E. Weber-Bornstein, medical director of LifeBeat Medical Service.

During the past year, LifeBeat completed 466 runs, which tabulates into about 140 cardiac missions.

Appropriately, the focus of the fourth annual LifeBeat Conference, held Saturday at Cape Girardeau, was cardiac emergencies.

Weber-Bornstein was one of six speakers at the conference, sponsored by LifeBeat Air Medical Service and Southeast Missouri Hospital, and held at the Holiday Inn Convention Center in Cape Girardeau.

The conference, for physicians and nurses, was designed to identify appropriate treatment plans for cardiac emergency situations, identify new trends in cardiac care, and review varying arrhythmia and anti-arrhythmic medication.

The day-long conference, which attracted more than 90 persons, featured four local physicians, Webster-Bornstein, Lyle L. Brown, James B. Chapman, and Gordon L. Haycraft, and two St. Louis doctors, Denise L. Janosik and Frank Aguirre, both with St. Louis University Medical Center.

"The air medical service has been an important factor at Southeast Hospital, and especially to the open heart surgery program," said Webster-Bornstein. "We treat so many cardiac patients from such a wide area. Speed is vital in most cases for critical cardiac patients."

LifeBeat was inaugurated in August 1987, about three years after open heart surgery started at the hospital in October of 1984.

Since 1984, more than 1,300 open heart surgeries and 7,900 diagnostic cardiac cath and cardiac therapeutic procedures have been performed by Regional Heart Center surgical and catheterization teams, according to hospital officials.

"LifeBeat has worked closely with the heart center," said Weber-Bornstein. "The center includes cardiothoracic surgery, specialized cardiac nursing areas, two cardiac catheterization labs, cardiac emergency room, cardiac rehabilitation and cardiac education programs."

Hospital officials say the two cath labs offer all diagnostic cardiac catheterizations and therapeutic interventional procedures that are necessary for open-heart surgery backup, which includes such complex procedures as balloon angioplasty and valvuloplasty and directional coronary atherectomy.

"The LifeBeat Medical Service has come a long way in the past three years," said Mark Sprigg, head flight nurse for the program. "When I joined the service, nine months after it had started, air ambulance activity was slow.

"It took awhile for people to accept the program," he said. "Many people felt the service was not needed. Many of those feelings have disappeared now. People are seeing that the air service is saving lives."

LifeBeat activity has more than doubled its first year's activity. "We certainly didn't average a run a day the first year," said Sprigg. "Now, we're looking at a time when we will be averaging two runs a day."

The service would have been near that in 1990 if all mission requested could have been completed.

"We received 675 requests," said Sprigg. "But, we couldn't respond to more than 200 of them due to two factors weather, or the fact that the service was already out on a call.

"The weather was the biggest factor," said Sprigg. "Probably 80 percent (about 160 requests) were halted by weather."

Sprigg said there has been no letup in calls this year.

"We've been averaging more than two calls a day in April," he said. "If things keep going, we'll meet our maximum in the near future."

LifeBeat is a regional air service.

"We receive calls from a wide area," said Sprigg. "And, we return only about a third of the patients back to Southeast Missouri Hospital. We take a lot of patients to St. Louis. Others go to Evansville, Ind., Springfield, Ill., Memphis, Paducah, and other hospitals."

LifeBeat, which is equipped with two medical persons a nurse and paramedic carries all the necessary emergency equipment monitor defibrillator, infusion pumps, suction system, oxygen, intravenous equipment, ACLS drugs, and other items for cardiac and trauma care.

About 29 percent of LifeBeat runs are "scene" missions, which include head and spinal injuries, and multiple trauma. Seventeen percent of the runs are obstetrics cases, with 12 percent pediatric and neonatal cases.